Excellent little article about the Addergoole Community.

A SILVER VOICE FROM IRELAND

Addergoole – Ireland’s Titanic Village – is so-called because no fewer than 14 friends and neighbours set sail on the Titanic for a new life in America. 11 of these drowned in the freezing Atlantic waters. (See my earlier post here recounting the extraordinarily moving annual commemoration that takes place in this village in the West of Ireland.)

A commemorative plaque is to be unveiled in Castlebar, the main town in County Mayo, from which the emigrants departed by train. The Addergoole community has been instrumental in ensuring that this plaque be in both the Irish and English languages – a further fitting tribute to their kinsfolk, most of whom spoke only Irish when they left their friends and family on that ill-fated journey, a century ago.
The memory of the Addergoole 14 is indeed in the safe hands of the community that has not forgotten them.

Read the news story here. 

Well done, Addergoole!Another fine example of the excellence…

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Disparity in Population Decline in Ireland

 ´What makes an emigrant? What are the pressures which drive a young man or woman from the townland of his birth and his family pathetically equipped mentally, to try and make a living in an alien mileau…Every man has his own story, every girl her own reason.´[i]

                                                                                         John Healy

Irish Emigration: Not such a simple story

“Certainly for all our assertions of patriotic love of country we have repeatedly proven that, given free access to any country with a standard of living higher than our own, we will readily relocate”

Professor Liam Ryan

Harry Clarke Stained Glass Window

Harry Clarke is commonly regarded as one of Ireland’s greatest stained glass artist. His name is synonymous with quality craftsmanship, imagination and a genius for selecting and using deep rich colours.

Parnell In Lahardane?

After the Great Famine a period of reorganisation and prosperity was experienced until further famines occurred in 1878-81 and on several occasions during the 1890s bringing hunger and deprivation. The academic Roy Foster explains why this occurred:

Year of the French – Addergoole Connection

The French are in our Fairgreen -1798

Bliain na bhFrancach

Part 2

Less well known is the detail of what Addergoole people did in the 1798 Campaign. A book published in 1937 by Richard Hayes “The Last Invasion of Ireland” has this information. Here is the local story, told largely through extracts from the book where local oral historians gave accounts to Hayes. First, in Hayes’s own words:

Landlords of Parish of Addergoole

The earliest reference to the parish was in Pope Innocent’s letter of 1198. Addergoole was referred as Eadargavillovhon.

The last Invasion of Ireland

The French are in our Fairgreen -1798

Bliain na bhFrancach

Part 1

France was declared a republic in 1792 and Connaught was declared one in 1798. The United Ireland movement of the 1790’s was a non-sectarian movement and it was the diplomatic activity of Wolfe Tone that culminated in the French expeditions to Ireland.

Famine and Deprivation

The threat of Blight and Famine was always prevalent

The Addergoole Fourteen emigrated from a part of Ireland that had experienced famine and deprivation through out the nineteenth century. Though popular history tends to concentrate on the monstrous effects of the Great Irish Famine it inadvertently diverts attention from the effects of the multitude of localized famines that affected communities similar to that found at Lahardane, The Titanic Village, and others throughout the island of Ireland.